Tom Clancy's Power Plays 5 - 8

by Tom Clancy

  “First thing to remember: Nature’s given us a window of opportunity. We have more speed than we should need, and water and sky patrols making sure nobody else comes near it,” he said. “It’s up to us to get in the window when it opens, get the job done, and get out.”

  Eckers saw nods.

  “Second thing: We can assume our targets will be the objects of an exhaustive search, and that they’ll be given equally thorough postmortems when they’re found,” he said. “This must—I stress must—pass for an accident under intense scrutiny. I don’t expect it to happen, but the moment one of us has to fire a shot is when we’ll know something’s gone critically wrong, got me?”

  Eckers saw more nods around him and left it at that.

  “Time’s come,” he said, and then turned toward their waiting craft.

  The Aug Stingray was into its third pass of the overflight zone when its pilot sighted an immense yacht nearing the cordoned off area . . . surprisingly the first boat he’d encountered, but he’d heard reports of several perimeter interceptions on the shared communications channel.

  He tapped his copilot’s shoulder, pointed to the tuna tower aft of the enclosed bridge.

  “Looks as if’n ’twere headin’ out t’fetch some big yellers,” he said. “Gon’ be some bloody disappointed faces on that fishin’ tub, don’ ’e think?”

  The copilot nodded, withholding a frown. The perils of multinationalism, he thought. A Frenchman who’d once flown with the DAOS special operations aviation unit in a squadron attached to Henri Beauchart’s Group d’Intervention, he often had to strain to decipher his fellow crewman’s pronounced Yorkshire accent.

  “I’ll notify a patrol boat to turn them aside,” he said in perfectly enunciated English, and toggled on his radio headset.

  Nimec had assumed the pontoon boat would provide a smooth, quiet, and comfortable ride—that was the whole idea behind its low-drag design—but he’d thought it would be kind of weak in the horsepower department. All told, though, it moved at a faster clip than he might have expected, and he guessed Blake the Bronze must have pushed it up to a speed of about forty knots getting them to the reef area.

  In the stern with Annie, Nimec was also surprised by the sense of well-being that gradually came to possess him. It didn’t quite shut out his thoughts of what he’d observed at the harbor, and he would have felt delinquent if it had. But the pleasures of the ride swung him away from those thoughts, removed him from them mentally as he gained physical distance from Los Rayos, to find himself in a seemingly endless space absent of anything but blue water and sky. Within ten or fifteen minutes after setting out, he’d even ceased to notice other watercraft nearby. And while the faint, recurrent drone of patrolling helicopters would occasionally remind him of the island at his rear, its tug at his consciousness lost insistence as the trip went along, the choppers seeming far off and peripheral in their unseen flight patterns.

  At one point he’d gotten up to lean quietly out over the rail, the breeze streaming over him, when Annie came over and gently took hold of his arm.

  “This is how it’s always been for me on an airplane,” she said. “Even before the Air Force or NASA. When I was a teenager flying in my dad’s rattletrap Beech.”

  Nimec had looked at her, smiled, gone back to staring out at the water.

  They had been standing there together for a few minutes when her fingers tightened around him a bit.

  “Pete, honey, look at them!” she said, and gestured excitedly to their rear with her other hand. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Nimec had glanced down and seen the scythe-like dorsal fins and curved backs of dolphins breaking the water as a bunch of them raced toward the boat, stayed alongside it for a while, then shot past like light gray torpedoes.

  He’d returned his eyes to Annie’s face.

  “Beautiful,” he’d said, his throat inexplicably tight.

  Fifteen minutes or so later Blake had cut the engine and come around out of the pilot’s station. Turning toward him, Nimec noticed a group of steel deepwater buoys some distance from the bow . . . far enough away, in fact, so that they might have been small red and green apples bobbing on the calm surface. He lifted his binoculars and had a look.

  “That where the reef is?” he’d asked, wondering why they would have stopped so short of it.

  Blake had shaken his head.

  “Attaboy, ace—nice to see you payin’ attention even if you’re a tick off the mark,” he’d said with a throaty laugh. “I suggest you leave the sailin’ to me, though. We’re sitting right over the coral banks. The water’s shallow enough hereabouts, too right. Those warning buoys are to steer you ’round an underwater ledge three quarters, a half mile on . . . you wouldn’t want to conk into it when the tide’s low, and that’ll be soon enough by my figurin’.”

  Nimec had grunted. Had his question really been that funny? Nothing like somebody having a chuckle at your expense, he’d thought.

  But Blake had hardily slapped his back before he could get too annoyed. “C’mon, mate, hand off the binocs, an’ let’s see if we can’t get you an’ the missus ready for a dive,” said the Aussie.

  Upon which he’d gone back across the deck to where they had deposited their equipment bags.

  Although Nimec hadn’t needed assistance gearing up, Blake was determined to provide it, and it seemed more trouble than it was worth to even consider fending him off . . . a sentiment Annie indicated she shared with a private little wink. As she sat to slip into her fins, clip her snorkel to her diving mask, and fit the mask over her face, Blake bent over her to make some vague added adjustments, then sidled over toward Nimec and did the same for him.

  “A few tips I’ll have you remember while you’re dippin’ under,” he said, fiddling with the strap of Nimec’s mask for no apparent reason. “Twenty feet down, twenty feet from the boat’s my rule of thumb. And don’t pet the cute little fishies, ’cause it can hurt’em. And don’t go reachin’ into any holes or crevices’cause some wonky creature hidin’ inside’m might want to hurt you.” He paused, looked the two of them over with his hands on his hips, nodded pridefully as if at a job well done. “Summin’ up, don’t bother anythin’ with scales, tentacles, or a jelly bod, or get bit, stung, or snagged on the coral and you’ll be jake . . . an’ much as I’d like to accompany you lovebirds, I’ll be up here keepin’ lookout if there should be any problems.”

  They waited until he was finished talking, got up, and flapped toward the stern in their fins.

  Crouching beside Annie on the dive platform, Nimec glanced back over his shoulder at Blake.

  “Forgot to ask,” he said. “There sharks in these waters?”

  Blake grinned from where he stood on the deck.

  “Just of the laid-back variety, mate!” he said.

  And before Nimec could manage a frown, Annie grabbed his wrist, let out a yip of frisky delight, and rolled into the water, pulling him in with a splash.

  Steering his regular course to the yellowfin tuna grounds about thirty kilometers out from his dock at Los Rayos, Greger Fisk, the captain of the sportfisherman charter Norwegian Wind, had scarcely taken notice of the helicopters overhead. The least well-off passengers on his luxurious Netherlands-built Heesen were millionaires, and they were looked upon with near scorn by the truly prosperous aboard, who were in turn thought of as a bare step up from crude bourgeoisie by the wealthiest of the resort’s guests—sheiks, royals, and business tycoons of celestial power and financial means who would sail their own motor yachts or none at all, in search of prized finned specimens.

  In the air for purposes of security, the helicopters were constants in these parts and, like hovering gulls and clouds, had come within range of the captain’s awareness only as familiar aspects of the scenery. To be sure, Fisk was used to them. But he had sometimes found it a comfort to see them in his first months captaining a ship based on the island, given that he’d known he must navigate his important and valuable
patrons—prize specimens in their separate right—through a dangerous world of terrorists, hijackers, and modern pirates.

  The coastal patrol boat with a Los Rayos Security emblem on its prow, however, caught his attention even before it came speeding up on his port side to hail him on its public address system. And unbeknownst to Captain Fisk, his newbie spotter on the radar-equipped tuna-and-marlin tower had reacted to the sudden, deafening alert with a startlement that nearly sent him tumbling down from his high platform to the bridge.

  “You are entering a temporarily restricted zone, Norwegian Wind,” the voice blared over the cutter’s loudspeaker. “Inform us at once of your destination over intership channel twenty-two B—that is two-two-Bertha—and we will reroute. Over.”

  Fisk reached for the radio handset on his helm console, identified himself, gave the coordinates of the tuna grounds, and then listened to the specifics of the detour with chagrin . . . It would cost him an hour, or even longer. Then he thought about the level of ire it would bring about in his fanatical anglers and almost shuddered. A year or so back, his ship had been just ten miles short of a teeming pod of fish when a British prime minister’s vacation yacht had crossed its path, the attendant patrol boat escort forcing him into a circuitous, lengthy, and in Fisk’s opinion unnecessary course change that had left his infuriated passengers with limp lines, empty hooks, and many, many vocal complaints.

  He pressed his handset’s talk button, mindful of past experience. Perhaps today he might succeed in a compromise.

  “Captain Fisk, again, coastal patrol. I roger your alternate coordinates,” he said. And then took his stab. “Request permission to stand by and wait if that would be shorter, over.”

  “Negative, Captain. Our action will take a while.”

  “I’m going to have some very unhappy passengers,” Fisk pressed.

  “We apologize, Captain. This area’s off limits and must be cleared of traffic.”

  Fisk felt the wind go out of him.

  “Can you help me with explanations for when they chew my head off?”

  “We’ve received a Mayday distress call and are taking appropriate action. That’s all I can tell you, Captain. Out.”

  Fisk expelled a long, defeated breath and set the handset into its clip, wondering how serious the Mayday might be. With so many amateur boaters in the water panicking if they so much as got splashed by a wave, one never knew. Nine times out of ten it was something minor.

  Captain Greger Fisk sighed again, girding for his announcement over the ship’s intercom, thinking he might as well throw himself overboard afterward and give the patrols a real problem to worry about.

  Nimec and Annie swam a few feet from the boat in the warm, placid green water, then floated facedown on the surface and immediately saw the great reef below them.

  It was, Nimec thought, spectacular. What he might have described as a sort of forest masquerading as crusted, irregular shelves of rock. The growth of new living coral flared off it in shoots, spurs, and willowy masses of different shapes, all of them covered in seaweed that ribboned out and out in long, drifting strands.

  They kept looking down through their face masks a bit, pulling regular breaths into their snorkels. Then they filled their lungs and dove.

  Nimec had expected to catch a glimpse of some underwater life, but the reef was teeming with creatures everywhere. It was, he thought, almost too much to take in all at once. Schools of tiny silvery-blue fish darting between coral branches that swayed and undulated in the gentle current; some spidery, leggy thing that fled through a nook in the formation in a scattery cloud of sand; a great bugeyed fish with iridescent red scales, blotchy blue spots on its massive head, and what seemed to be dozens of fins spraying from its sides. It at first moved slowly past them, and then put on a sudden, explosive burst of speed to plow away through a dense clump of plant growth.

  Then Nimec felt Annie tap his shoulder, looked over at her, nodded.

  They went up for air.

  The racing boat moved at idle speed like a restrained thoroughbred, its twin 225hp outboards humming in low gear.

  Beside his pilot in the forward bow seat, Eckers checked the time with his digital wristwatch, fingered on its compass display for a moment, and then shifted his glance to the GPS marine chart on his handheld. The latter device would have sufficed to give him all the information he wanted, but he was a cautious man, and a comparison check could only back up and refine his situational awareness.

  He brought his binoculars up to his eyes, spotted the target at rest in the clear distance ahead, turned the zoom knob with his thumb, studied it more closely, and nodded to himself.

  “Kick it, Harrison,” he said at last, glancing over at the pilot. “They’re ours.”

  Nimec had plunged down for his fourth or fifth dive to the reef when he heard the distinctive thrum of an engine somewhere above. It made him curious. He turned to Annie, who was beside him exploring a huge knob of coral that was plastered with starfish and other tentacled, suctiony things. He pointed to his ear, then pointed toward the surface, and up they went to investigate.

  On his deck enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, Blake was a touch perplexed when he noticed the yellow racer planing across the water toward him. This was not because crafts of that sort were rare sights in themselves, but because they usually came in pairs or threesomes . . . hard for a crew to stage a race if they didn’t have any competition. Course, he thought, these blokes might be on a solo practice run. Made good sense, since they were traveling at a moderate speed, and the environmentalists looked upon contests near the reef formations with sneering disapproval. Did all sorts of bad, said they in their cries for legal restrictions—damaged the coral heads, tore apart the seaweed growth, disturbed and injured the sea life. And who with a right brain and working eyes could dispute it?

  Blake watched the racer continue to approach from starboard, the sound of its engines growing louder by the second. Then he thought about his lovebirds and glanced to the left, making sure they were still safely on the opposite side of his boat, where he’d last seen them . . . and there he found them surfacing for air within the approximate twenty-foot boundary he’d laid out. Fine couple, they were. And took instruction with no flapping of the lips, which made them all the finer.

  He saw Pete wave to him, waved back, noticed him stay on top looking his way, and made the OK sign to let him know everything was all right, betting he’d heard the hum of the racer’s outboards and gotten curious. It was easy to hear a noise like that when you were underwater, tough to judge the direction it was coming from because of the way vibrations scattered.

  Blake smiled. Maybe old Pete was worried he’d scram off with the boat. It was dotty to even think he’d be concerned about that, sure, and wasn’t something that struck Blake in a serious-minded vein . . . or not too much so anyway. Hard to put a finger on it, but there was quite a bit more to that fellow than might seem. Always on the watch, he was. And three or four thoughts deeper into his head than he let on.

  Blake turned toward the sled-shaped racing boat again. It was still coming on apace, and had gotten near enough for him to tally a crew of four aboard, men in gray shortie wetsuits. A few minutes later it had almost pulled abeam and was throttling down.

  He moved to the starboard safety rail, watched the racer slow to a halt in the water several yards away.

  “Hello!” hollered the man seated beside the pilot. He was an American, to tell from his accent. “Embarrasses me to say this, but we’ve gotten ourselves lost.”

  Blake stood with his hands on the rail. Well, he thought, that answered a question or two.

  “Sorry to hear it, mate,” he said. “You out of Los Rayos?”

  “And trying to find our way back,” the man replied with a nod. “Our GPS unit went on the blink.”

  Blake gave him a commiserative look. Lord knew why, but it was just the sort of thing that happened with tourists.

  “Got to love those gizmo
s . . . It’s why I always bring a good, old-fashioned reliable map for backup,” he said. “No need to fret, ’owever, I could shout you directions if you’d like. The island’s no more’n forty minutes due east, with a small twist this way ’n’ that.” He paused. “You gents set for petrol an’ supplies?”

  The man nodded.

  “No problems there, thanks,” he said. Then he tilted his head toward his pilot. “Hope I’m not imposing, but it’d be a help if we could have a look at that map of yours.”

  Blake thought about it a second and then shrugged his broad shoulders.

  “No imposition ’t all,” he said. “Pull yourselves broadside, toss a line across, ’n’ we’ll bring the two of you aboard—how’s that?”

  The man offered a big smile.

  “Sounds perfect,” he said.

  “I ’ave a spare chart in this chamber a’ horrors somewhere, worst part’s findin’ it ’midst the rest a’ my junk,” Blake was saying a few minutes later. He was in his pilot station bent over a storage compartment below the butterfly wheel, the men from the racer’s bow seat standing behind him, their craft bound fast to his gunwale. “Soon’s I pull it out, I can get the route ’ighlighted with a marker an’ you’ll be on your way right quick.”

  “Can’t tell you often enough how much we appreciate it,” Eckers said. He nodded to his companion, who reached into a belt pouch against his hip.

  Blake fumbled in the compartment, moving aside a first aid kit, a pack of facial tissues, a bottle of sunblocker, a box of toothpicks, and a two-year-old program for the Matildas women’s soccer team with a feature article on a particularly sexy goalie.

  “You blokes keep thankin’ me, I might start to believe I’m doin’ somethin’ that deserves it,” he said without turning, his hand still in the box. What on earth was a plastic bag filled with marbles, metal jacks, and a red rubber ball doing in there? One of these days he’d have to tidy up. “By the way, m’name’s Blake Davies. Didn’t catch either a’ yours.”